Who You Gonna Call: 'Ghostbusting' Tourism in New Orleans

"Ghosts are big business down here," says New Orleans real-estate dealer Finis D. Shelnutt, whose nightly walking tours, on which the participants also get to "bust ghosts" with handheld electronic-activity detection meters, have in the last three years taken pride of place in the French Quarter's many exceptional tourist offerings. "Bartenders around the Quarter have always reported glasses moving around on the top of the bar, and stuff like that."

Although, it's debatable whether the bartenders' reports are absolute proof of paranormal activity or whether there were just some really fast drinkers who didn't want to settle their bar tabs on those evenings, the long-presumed "haunts" of New Orleans, coupled with the Crescent City's traditional history of voodoo, have taken a decidedly marketable turn. With his French Quarter History and Ghostbusters Tours, Shelnutt was one of the early entrepeneurs.

"Three years on, we have to take reservations now, although walk-ups are still welcome," says Shelnutt, whose tours kick off at 7 :30, rain or shine, from his real estate office at 622 1/2 Pirates Alley, the little cobbled elbow of a lane behind the Quarter's famous St. Louis Cathedral. A ghostlier address could not be had, except, of course, for Shelnutt's own 18th-century French mansion at 720 St. Louis Street, which is also on the tour.

"Jim Garrison—you remember, the Kennedy assassination District Attorney investigator—lived upstairs in my building," says Shelnutt. "As did legendary clarinetist Al Hirt, as did Humphrey Bogart's mistress, whom I knew as she was in her eighties, who was really a kick. Although the Seule family, one of the richest old Creole families, built my house, I think the ghostly movement in it comes from Panama Hattie, who was a madam running a whorehouse in there after she became famous down in Panama. She had only blondes. Real ones. We think it's her ghosts moving the glasses around on the bar downstairs."

Whether or not the subject of the famous Cole Porter musical was a dissatisfied enough soul to remain at 720 St. Louis moving the shot glasses around, the house is a magnificent, and unusual, end of the tour.

"Taking the tours inside the house is the new thing," Shelnutt says, "because they never get to go inside the places. I mean, ok, you can go inside the Absinthe House, or Jean Laffitte's blacksmith shop but that's about it."

But there has been some very real-world fallout from all the paranormal fetishizing of which New Orleans businesses seem so capable. Moved by the success of his own and others' tours, Shelnutt jokingly added the line "Haunted/Non-Haunted" as a runner on his condominium rental signs in his very real-world, and very successful, real estate business. As if it were an option in the rental for the Super Bowl, let's say. Everybody in the Quarter thought it was just a joking inside reference to Shelnutt's popular "ghostbusting" tours. Which it had been.

Until George Takei, the actor who played the iconic Mr. Sulu on the original Star Trek, caught a glimpse of the sign, took a shot of it, and posted it on his Facebook page.